Hot answers tagged fruit
9
You generally want to add fruit to the secondary fermentation. At this point, you already have alcohol that can help ward off any meanies hiding in your fruit. I am having trouble finding a source for this but I remember from a course I took that adding fruit to the primary will add more fruit smell and secondary would add more flavor. The smell part ...
9
It depends on what you're doing really. Adding fruit can be risky as there is always a chance of contamination.
I've made fruit beers before and didn't want to boil them and lose a bunch of flavor. So instead I opted to freeze the fruit, and then slowly thaw it out in the fridge. Now keep in mind that freezing will not guarantee no contamination, but it ...
9
There's probably a reason you haven't heard of people using either kiwi or papaya in brewing. Kiwi, papaya, pineapple, melon, and fig all contain enzymes (proteases) that affect proteins. Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking treats this subject. Papaya has long been used as a meat tenderizer, albeit an imperfect one.
The McGee piece addresses mainly these ...
7
I think it's possible to leave the fruit in there for too long, but I don't think a couple of weeks or even a month will hurt. As a homebrewer and home winemaker, I have two ways to look at this issue...
Technically, when you ferment fruit you are making wine. When you add fruit to your secondary, one could argue that you're adding a bit of wine to your ...
7
What you're tasting is the distinct flavor of west-coast hops. Most people liken it to a citrus, grapefruit, or sometimes orange peel aroma and flavor. You might be getting guava from the combination of tangy hops and a sweet, sugar-cookie base from the malt.
Racer 5 uses Centennial, Chinook, Cascade, and Columbus hops. I've heard that Islander IPA uses ...
7
Slow down a second, DWRHAH. What makes you think this batch is infected? Vigorous fermentation is usually just a sign of good yeast health. Most of my batches of beer are done with the bulk of fermentation 24-48 hours after pitching. Honey, unlike malt, is mostly monosaccharides, and is actually easier for yeast to ferment, thus would progress even faster.
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6
Whenever possible I like to use Oregon Fruit Purees. These purees come in large cans that have been flash pasturized already. The fruit is also in a puree format so there is not additional prep and fruit to wort contact is superior to slicing and dicing the fruit.
Also for seeded fruits like strawberries and blueberries, much of the seed material has been ...
5
I'd let it complete. You're not going to lose strawberry flavor by letting it ferment all the fruit. The sugar will attach the sugar from the berries; the flavor compounds will remain intact.
Also, even if you keg it now - racking it off the fruit pulp - it will continue to ferment the berry sugar in the keg. The yeast and the fruit's ...
5
KEG IT NOW!
I make a strawberry wheat too and the beauty of kegging is to not worry about the extra ferment. If you were bottling then you have the right idea you'd have to let it go.
When I make mine I keg it when its at its peak. I usually make that beer in prep for my wife b-day which happens in late July. I plan it just right to ferment the beer, ...
4
For a definite cherry flavor, you should be using a sour cherry which will have less simple sugars and more unfermentables. Sweet cherries will ferment out dry and will add to your ABV disproportionate to flavor.
A pound of cherries can have no more than 1 pound of sugars, obviously. When using simple sugars, i.e. brown sugar or molasses, etc about a ...
4
For fruit, get a refractometer. $50 or so online at williamsbrewing.com or other beer/wine shops. Mash up a handful of the fruit 'til it's juice and then dribble the juice on the refractometer lens. That will give you a brix reading. There's probably some formal math you can use to get exact numbers here, but here's some basic info: 24 brix when ...
4
If you do use a bucket for the secondary then you can just keep the whole lot of berries in a muslin bag. Just don't make it too tight so there is enough circulation to impart the flavors. Other than that you may just have to convince yourself that it is an acceptable loss for some great beer.
4
If you can find fresh fruit I would suggest using that. If not, I would go with a puree over the flavoring liquids. I have heard that the flavoring liquids can come out tasting like cough syrup. I did a cherry stout not to long ago and couldn't find fresh cherries so I used 2 cans of cherry puree. It came out great.
As for flavor, I love a raspberry wheat, ...
4
When you say fruit flavoring are you talking about extract? If you are I would use fresh fruit or a puree (Oregon brand) first. The extract can come out tasting like cough medicine.
Using fresh or puree you can add directly to the primary fermentation vessel or if you are racking to a secondary you can add it then rack on top of it. I have had success both ...
4
Do you have access to millet? That's a very close sub for sorgum. This might not sound appealing, but millet is usually available in pet stores as bird food.
Looking around, i spotted a few recipes on homebrewtalk.com for Rwandan banana beer, and a few folks used Oats instead of millet or sorgum, so that seems like a good sub as well, and certainly ...
3
I recently made a Belgian strong ale with 7#s of cherries in it. I pitted all of them, and then froze them. After frozen I let them thaw. I sanitized my blender and blended them up a bit, and poured them into my secondary and racked the beer over it. At no point did I boil or use any type of sanitization process on the cherries themselves.
I'm not sure if ...
3
My take on this type of question is that you aren't going to get it right the first time, so don't over think it. If you want to make a "perfect" fruit beer on the first try I say make a great stout and add cherry extract at bottling time.
If you are prepared to deal with the unpredictable, then I would not worry about the sugars in the fruit yet. Just ...
3
Chop it up.
Freeze it.
Let warm up.
Add to secondary.
There are issues with natural yeast and bateria in the fruit. Freezing it will kill most of these. The low pH of the beer, and alchohol will help to prevent the rest from taking a hold in the beer. Make sure to account for the extra water the fruit will add. With large fruit like pears I cut it in ...
3
Banana is higher in sugar content followed by mango, papaya and then guava. Typically people add sugar in with the fruit to increase the specific gravity. This gives you more alcohol content in the final product. You may not have to add as much extra sugar if you mix the other fruits with bananas. Aim for something around 1.080 S.G. to start with.
Pay close ...
3
Naw if they have sunflower oil listed on them, then I'd eat them separately and find something else to put in the beer. Not sure if you guys have the Publix grocery store up in Boston, but they carry dried cherries that you can buy in bulk and only have one listed ingredient ("dried cherries").
3
It sounds like you already know the answer. You want to wait until the gravity has evened out and off flavors are cleaned up, but not so long that the yeast have all settled. You also want to be sure enough yeast are floating around that fermentation can quickly start again and any bacteria that rode the fruit train will be outnumbered. I usually give it ...
3
Time is your friend. The flavor will never go away completely but it will mellow a bit with age.
Adding honey as you suggest could possibly balance out the grapefruit with more sweetness but it will not get rid of the grapefruit flavor. If you still have viable yeast they will go to work on the new sugars and assuming they have enough O2 they will ...
3
Type of Fruit
As with most flavor related questions...it depends; sorry. There are generally four or five fruit sources: Fresh Fruit, Frozen Fruit, Fruit Puree, Fruit Juice, and Fruit Extract. Each is going to give you a different flavor, and depending on the fruit flavor you're looking for, one or the other might be the best. The real answer is that you ...
3
Unfortunately, you may wind up with a cloudy beer. Boiling will have "set" the natural pectin (the stuff that makes jams and jellies thick) in the raspberries. This will likely result in a beer that will never really get bright and clear. Not that I would expect an IPA to be crystal clear anyway, really.
When I have added fruit like this to a mead ...
3
I've never had a problem with it (come to think of it, I've never bothered to check if my raisins were processed with oil).
I would not advise pre-boiling the raisins (or the strawberries!) as you are probably going to lose a signficant amount of tannins and other compounds that are desirable in your wine. That's why you use them after all. If you are ...
3
Second part first...
In my experience don't bother with pectic enzyme for cranberries. They don't seem to release that much. I speculate its do to their firm skins vs. raspberries or other fruits. A gelatin rest for should be fine. The few cranberried beers I've done cleared up just fine with out pectin.
The first part second...
If you let primary come ...
2
What is your vessel? The bugs in Roeselare need more oxygen than yeast does.
I've heard that using a plastic bucket, which lets in quite a bit of oxygen, can drop the pellicle in as little as 6 months.
I've also seen people use the wooden-stick-in-a-carboy method that have dropped between 1 and 2 years.
Like @Fishtoaster said, some people wait until the ...
2
Is your carboy glass or plastic? If you're using a plastic carboy you definitely don't want to go mashing things around inside because you'll run the risk of scratches. Bacteria hide in scratches.
I'd recommend adding some OxyClean or PBW, some hot (not boiling!) water, and shaking up the carboy until the fruit pieces break up into smaller ones that will ...
2
Slow is good (no pun intended), and anecdotally at any rate, I believe it leads to a more thorough fermentation and usually a dryer wine.
As long as it's fermenting, no matter how slowly, it's doing the right thing. Some fermentations are over in days, others take weeks, and some months!
Be patient!
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